


Words Almost Forgotten

by Lire_Casander



Category: Hanson
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-05
Updated: 2013-09-05
Packaged: 2017-12-25 17:01:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/955559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lire_Casander/pseuds/Lire_Casander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It would have been only that; a moment like any other, had you not had that look in your eyes. That smile on your lips. But you were smiling. And it changed my world.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Words Almost Forgotten

  
_Ask me for what am I living_   
_Or what gives me strength_

Life and Love and Why - Switchfoot

 

**I.**

You looked at me.

It would have been only that; a moment like any other, had you not had that look in your eyes. That smile on your lips.

But you were smiling. And it changed my world.

I was barely twelve years old, a kid just playing at being an adult. Isaac, normally my confidant, had just entered that stage in his life where no one was more important than himself, and I felt alone. But even if Isaac had been with me, what filled my heart was not what a normal twelve-year-old boy must feel.

In the middle of the commotion that was my entrance into adolescence, you looked at me. You looked at me and smiled.

It was everything I needed.

You had a stick in your hand; we were starting our musical careers. Together. Another adventure. But to me it meant the world.

Ten years later, here we are. Life is so complicated that I can't recognize myself in my own reflection in the mirror. Sometimes I've wished to be able to become the person I wanted to be when I was only a child, to be able to escape from everything and everyone.

Except from you.

Because you had looked at me and you had seen me. You knew who I was before becoming what I am now, this absurdity of smoke and flashes that the media have created. You have been my light those moments when I lost my path. That's why I can't let you make the same mistakes I've made.

I owe you that much.

A long time ago we had a conversation about life, love, and the mysteries they bring. We were drunk, but I think myself moreso than you. Perhaps (that was what) forced me to act like I did.

"There are times when love is not what one expects," I had said. You were too far gone to understand, but I needed you to. More than anyone I needed you to. "Sometimes you don't love who you're supposed to but a person you don't have the right to love. I feel like that."

"Really?" you had asked, narrowing your eyes. "Who are you in love with, Tay?"

I wanted to shout out the obvious answer to your quesion, but the words didn't come to me. I couldn't tell you the truth. I was too scared to speak, but you were so close, your face almost over mine, your breath warming up the air around me. How was I to resist?

I leaned forward, into you, and hesitated a second before your lips, so unintentionally inviting.

I kissed you.

Immediately I backed down, thinking that I must have scared the shit out of you - that you would not want to see me ever again. I lay back down, waiting for your shouts. But they never arrived. There was fear in your gaze, yes, but it was fear of the unknown knocking at your door, not fear of your brother who you might've thought was going crazy.

You looked at me and saw me. You knew who I was, you dived into my soul and found the answer to the unasked question I could see in your eyes. You didn't let me lose my courage, you didn't let me doubt. You stopped me in my attempt to move away, and led me towards you again.

You kissed me.

It's the only memory I need to take with me.

 

 

**II.**

I still remember the flavor of your lips on mine, when kissing was the only thing that made sense. From that conversation I understood that I was made to be by your side. Even today, so much time passed that I can't even count the minutes, I'm sure that we had to meet, in this life and in the rest. Luck wanted that, in this one, we were brothers.

It's the classic dirty trick of destiny.

But I'm not going to be overcome by the desperation I feel when I see you with her. I don't care that you have two children with her, I don't care that you say that you love her. Because I know, in my heart, you're the only one for me. I'm not one to surrender easily. You know that I'm going to fight for you.

Although the entire world is against me and I should abandon what I believe in, I will fight for you.

We are sitting in front of each other, in this small space in the tour bus where there's a table and a couple of bank seats. Neither of us wants to speak and nevertheless this silence is eloquent by itself.

If I were asked right now what I'm thinking about, the answer would be fast and very simple. I'm thinking of you. Cheesy as it sounds, I can't stop thinking about you. About your gaze, lost in the middle of the ocean of landscapes that surrounds us; about the silence around you, so heavy I wish I could carry it for you; about your crystal hands drumming upon the table as if you wanted to compose a melody of wood in three tempos.

My mind can only focus on Taylor Hanson. On the Taylor Hanson I know, who is still hidden in some remote place of your soul. On the Taylor Hanson who dared to kiss me.

You were bolder before, Taylor. But I suppose that life and its misfortunes have made an impression on you in the same way it's done to me. Even so, I try to convince myself that you haven't changed at all, that all this is nothing more than a façade to hide what you really feel.

Because I don't believe you don't love me anymore.

And nevertheless it's what your lips pronounce, what your voice tells me. Your eyes, however, are sad. That's why I know that you still love me. Because soul mates are destined to end up together. And I will be here when you realize it.

I know that, someday, you will ask me when I knew that I could wait for you eternally. It was ten years ago, when you looked at me. Taylor, you looked down at me and didn't see me like the ten-year-old who followed you everywhere – you saw me, and that was something no one else had done before.

You looked at me and saw me. And I could read in your gaze that you loved me like something more than a brother. And I wished that you could say aloud what you felt, because then I could tell you that I loved you too.

You never said it.

We are sitting in the bus, watching each other in silence again; I want to say so many things, but I know that even if I had a month it would not be enough time to speak the words aloud. You don't want to look me in the eyes while your body announces what nobody needs to say. You can't undo what's already undone, Taylor. How I wish you could understand that.

Faced with your cowardice, I've decided not to hold on anymore. It's her or me, Taylor, and I was determined to make it be me. But after everything, I'm not sure we're going to be together in this life. So, hard as it is, I'm going to leave you. I'm going to try and forget what we had, or what we haven't had. Someday, when I've made my own mistakes, when I've lived enough to know that it's my cue to come back to you, I will. I will rescue you. But meanwhile I have to learn to live without you.

Without the person who understands me with no need for words. Without the person who soothes me when things go bad, though I'm older now. Without my big brother. Without my soul mate. Without the love of my life.

Without you.

 

 

**III.**

_Nine years later_

It has been a long time since I last saw you in a place outside the study or a concert. So much time that I can't even remember that last moment. Perhaps because I didn't think it was going to be the last one.

Nobody thinks that the last has arrived, we always try to keep that hope for tomorrow, when everything will change. I quit believing years ago. The exact day we stopped fighting.

I remember that moment perfectly. I remember the perfect curve of your eyebrows arching, the wounded glance and the tremor in your lips. I wanted to comfort you, and in time I restrained my hand that, treacherous, had started to approach yours. I couldn't comfort you for the damage I was inflicting to you. It would have been hypocritical. At that time, a small part of me knew that I wasn't doing what was right.

Today, nine years later, that small part has become my conscience, appalled and scared.

I am in the same spot, on a bus going nowhere, dreaming of you. You chase me in my own dreams, Zac, and your image harasses me when I close my eyes. Sometimes they're your eyes that I see, and sometimes they're Natalie's, so similar yet so different. Sometimes, it's Natalie's voice that sings me a lullaby until the dream arrives, more and more scarce lately.

Today is another anniversary for me – it's been a year since I got my divorce. I lost everything, Zac, I lost everything for you. I know that I arrived too late, that you no longer believed in me, but I had to try. By then, you had married Kate and Jonah had been born. When I appeared at your door, papers in hand and hope in my eyes – the hope that you would be able to forgive me – I asked you for your forgiveness. You didn't give it.

My children don't know me. They have another father, one who really takes care of them as they deserve. I resigned myself to that for you, for us, but it wasn't the right time. Eight years behind schedule, you said. Eight years. I am thirty-one and I still don't know what my place in this world is. I used to think that Hanson and music would always be my refuge. But your presence at each rehearsal made everything more complicated.

I was falling apart so fast; my lyrics were not as good as they should have been and I became gloomy. You even told me that I didn't deserve to be in the band. Know what? You were right. You've been right all these years.

That's why I'm leaving – everything will be simpler. Nothing matters anymore, because all that had meaning for me has disappeared or has been set against me. I wish I could say goodbye to you. But it's impossible.

I love you too much to hurt you again.

Take care. I'm sure everything will go better once I've vanished off the face of the earth.

 

 

**IV.**

I wish I could say that our story has a happy ending, but I'm not able to traverse the future. All I can tell you is how I've ended up here, in this moment on a Cape Cod beach.

The day I found out you left, my world collapsed. Literally. You were – _are_ – part of my life. You were – _are_ – one of the three pillars of Hanson. You were – _are_ – the only person I could talk to without feeling unworthy. I don't have that complicity with Kate, I never have.

It has been months since that fateful Monday, when you took a couple of shirts and your wallet and vanished. Months that I've spent thinking. Months that have made me realized the mistakes I've committed. Mistakes like when you came to my house with the divorce papers.

You knocked on my door mid-afternoon, euphoric.

"I'm free," you said. "I'm free. I'm sorry I haven't been brave before, Zac. But now I'm free and we will be able to do whatever we want."

"A little late, don’t you think?" I spat sharply. "What are you doing here? Kate could hear us."

"I don't care!" you exclaimed. "Everyone, hear me! I'm free and I can love you!"

"Shut up!"

I went out completely, and I closed the door at my back. I determined not to give in, not to leave my son and my wife although just looking at you was killing me slowly.

"Zac, I love you, I’m so sorry about everything that has happened between us, the awful times I gave you, the pain I’ve caused you. I don’t expect you to come back to me so many years after, I only want your forgiveness."

I didn’t give you a single chance. I glared at you with all the hatred I was able to find inside of me – when I didn’t find enough, I had to fake it.

"I can’t forgive the hurt, Taylor. There’s nothing else left."

"I love you! You said you would wait for me eternally! Don't you love me, Zac?"

I chose not to respond, but you didn't understand the signs I was sending to you. I really didn't want to lose you, but I suppose that's what I deserved. You looked me in the eyes one last time, then slowly turned around.

We never talked to each other after that.

And again it all takes me to this beach on Cape Cod, to this cloudless dawn, your sad figure on the sand. It's been some time, I know, but I would recognize your silhouette in the middle of a storm.

You are seated, oblivious to the fact that I'm behind you, staring. I've missed you so much it hurts to just see you – to be aware of how much I've lost. I've lost my brother, I've lost my best friend. I have lost my soul mate.

You look at the infinite ocean that extends before us, and although I can't see your face I know that your eyes are fixed on the blue that matches them. I approach slowly, trying to find the right words unsuccessfully. There's no word to excuse every single thing that has happened to us because of me.

I'm so close that I can touch your hair.

You turn around suddenly, and my world suffocates in your blue irises.

You look at me, as if you want to learn my silhouette. I do the same, noticing the small wrinkles around your eyes, the extinguished brightness of your skin, your chapped lips, your lost glance. I wonder if I'm to blame for what's happening to you.

There are no words to describe what I feel when, after what seems like years, you raise a trembling hand and slightly brush my cheek. That tickling in my spine, those butterflies flying in circles in my stomach. There are no words.

And I dare to lean towards you – you who were always taller than me – until almost touching your lips with mine. And I watch you intensely, the blue sapphire of your glance nailing into my irises.

Finally I find the words, so hidden that they were already almost forgotten. I whisper them in a breathy voice.

"Taylor, I couldn't _not_ love you."

There is nothing more than the heat of your lips on mine, no other sound than that of a calm sea hitting the shore playfully, in the same way that merges your soul and mine.

 


End file.
